Thursday, July 3, 2008

Different Type of Ministry

As I'm beginning to settle in and really study church planting, I have realized that my work here is going to be very different from past short term missions and I'm quite excited about that. One of the preliminary steps of church planting is understanding the context in which you are seeking to minister. For this reason, yesterday I went throughout the museums, read, and learned about the history of Sydney. As an intern in the business world not only helps the business with which he works, but learns the basic ropes of any business, this internship is not just learning and studying about Australia, but learning how to study any city and culture to understand how I can better reach out to those in any urban center.

Another one of the preliminary stages of church planting is something called networking. I will probably write about that more later during my experience, but within networking, I have learned of two different ways of networking, namely, micro networking and macro. Today I began to understand in a better sense macro networking as the Jungs had a prominent Anglican minister join us for lunch (his wife is American so she had some fellow Americans with which to celebrate Independence Day). I don't think I have ever met a man with such a love for people this man had. Through this experience all of us were able to ask him questions about the type of church Sydney needs, the type of people in Sydney, how he saw the gospel manifested in everyday life, etc. In this new contact and friendship that the Jungs have established, there is a wellspring of wisdom, guidance, and really people from which the Jungs can learn. This macro aspect of networking is a way of developing relationships with leaders and churches as a whole and through those relationships the planter has also networked with many other people.